A reduced payment of about $6,300, instead of the originally proposed $8,000, by property owners in a zone at risk of glacial outburst flooding to pay for protective barriers was approved Monday night by the Juneau Assembly, based on the city paying 60% of the cost rather than 50%. 

The amendment was made to a proposed ordinance establishing a Local Improvement District (LID) for 466 properties in the Mendenhall Valley considered vulnerable to flooding from Suicide Basin. The funding would cover installation and maintenance of military-grade Hesco flood barriers being supplied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a semipermanent levee along the most-populated side of the Mendenhall River.

The district is based on inundation maps at the 16-foot flood stage, the same level reached during this year’s record flood that peaked Aug. 6 and damaged about 300 homes, with the additional properties also considered vulnerable to flooding at that level due to the area’s topography. Property owners would be charged due to receiving upgraded protection, with the fee payable over a 10-year period.

Dozens of residents attended Monday’s Assembly meeting, the first of two public comment meetings scheduled on the ordinance city leaders hope to vote on in February, with clearly divided opinions for and against the proposed ordinance during testimony that lasted more than an hour.

Residents supporting it agreed with city leaders who say no other effective solution by next summer is feasible and a long-term remedy is almost certainly many years away. People opposed expressed a range of concerns from the expense on top of damage already sustained to the detrimental impacts of having the barriers placed on their properties for years.

John Cooper, a Meander Way resident affected by the flooding, said he supports the LID plan because, among other things, “I’ve worked for the federal government for my entire adult life. They can’t do anything fast.”

“I’m going to have to move my fences, I’m going to have to move my woodshed, I’m going to lose a significant portion of my backyard to do this,” he said. “But I’m going to do that for the good of the other people that are inside of this area and I’m willing to do that until a more permanent solution can be found.”

Some residents opposing the LID said they aren’t necessarily opposed to the barriers themselves, but being forced into paying for them.

“It feels like property owners are being bullied into a course of action with zero consideration for other funding options,” said Clinton Singletary, a Center Court resident. He said given the city’s concerns and uncertainty about getting the barriers in place before the flood threat returns next summer officials should “stop screwing around with our lives, and take action by rejecting this LED, pay for the project in full, and get this moving forward. Rejecting the LED now will be an extra two months to install the Hesco (barriers) to get this project done right.”

Peter Bangs, a Marion Drive resident, said a majority of people he’s spoken to in his subdivision are opposed to the LID as proposed. He said a preference has been expressed for installing the barriers for a shorter length of time — three years to start — based on their official five-year design life. Also, he said there are objections to properties that haven’t been flooded by waters at the 16-foot level being included in the plan and some residents want the option to install the barriers themselves.

“They don’t want their yards torn out by an unknown contractor,” he said. “They feel like they could do it cheaper and more carefully.”

City Manager Katie Koester, responding to Bangs and other residents expressing similar concerns about the decade-long plan for the LID, said experts have stated the barriers should provide effective protection for that length of time in Juneau’s conditions, it may take that long for a long-term solution to be implemented and the 10-year period allows residents more time to pay the cost — which largely consists of installing and then removing the barriers.

Assembly member Neil Steininger introduced the amendment to switch the split of the $7.8 million total local cost of installing the barriers to 60/40 with the city paying the higher end.

The per-property payment under the revision would be $6,291.85, rather than $7,972.10 under a 50/50 plan, payable over a 10-year period, according to Steininger. The amendment passed by a 5-3 vote.

Another amendment by Mayor Beth Weldon that passed unanimously would give four property owners facing an additional $50,000 fee to have riverbank armoring installed to safeguard against erosion up to 30 years to pay the full amount rather than the 10 years for others in the LID.

Mailings are scheduled to go out this week to everyone on the proposed LID assessment role and an FAQ providing an overview of the situation will be provided to the public, Koester said. A neighborhood meeting is tentatively planned in January, with a second Assembly meeting to get public comments and hear objections from property owners to LID scheduled Feb. 3.

Koester has stated the hope is to pass an ordinance at the February meeting that allows the ordinance to take effect in early March, which could be legally challenged until early April, with the ultimate goal of installing the semipermanent levee before the risk of flooding from Suicide Basin becomes significant next summer.

Advocating an alternative solution during the meeting and previously was a citizens group called Juneau Flood Solution Advocates, formed after the flood this August. A nine-minute video posted by the group on YouTube on Dec. 3 advocates a levee around Mendenhall Lake.

The video quotes Ed Neal, owner of Alaska Hydroscience and a former specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, supporting that option.

“The most viable option that would probably protect the valley into the future would be to construct some sort of flood retention basin here that backs up the level of the lake, say an additional 10 to 12 feet, to knock the flow levels down,” he says in the video.

An example of such a project cited by the video is the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project in North Pole, authorized by Congress after a major flood in 1967. However, construction didn’t begin until 1973 and it took until 1979 for the Army Corps of Engineers to complete the $256 million project.

The narration of the video states “although the functionality would be similar, the scale of a flood control project at Mendenhall Lake would be less than a quarter of the size of the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project.”

Regardless, the multiyear timeframe of any substantial project taking place at Mendenhall Lake or other U.S. Forest Service property has been emphasized by a range of officials — from city administrators to the Corps of Engineers to Alaska’s congressional delegation — due to the environmental, safety, financial and other issues involved. But members of the citizens group and others favoring the lake levee have argued the actual work to build one can be done quickly if the regulations are waived.

Such waivers, regardless of precedent, may not be out of the question once President-elect Donald Trump takes office and is working with a Republican-led Congress. He has vowed to repeal numerous regulations including those related to the environment and development. Furthermore, on Monday Gov. Mike Dunleavy submitted a request list for Alaska that includes declaring Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River belong to the state rather than the federal government, following up on a 2022 lawsuit seeking state seizure of those submerged lands.

However, Deputy City Manager Robert Barr, in an email Sunday to an advocate of a lake levee, stated it’s not just regulatory issues preventing it from being quickly built.

“Based on our conversations with the Army Corps of Engineers and other professionals in the field, it is impossible to build a lake levee prior to next summer,” Barr wrote. “There are many reasons, but perhaps the most significant is that any levee would have to be engineered sufficient to all but guarantee it would not fail, because in our case the consequences of a lake levee failure would be catastrophic.”

Efforts are underway between local government officials and the U.S. Forest Service to seek a solution, according to a press release issued Friday by the City and Borough of Juneau. It states CBJ and the Forest Service have “signed a $1 million participating agreement to search for a long-term solution providing relief to Juneau residents who reside in the flood path of the Mendenhall River.”

The release also notes the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, which provided assistance during this year’s flood, is involved in the cooperative agreement.

“The funds will go towards near-term studies to provide baseline data for the General Investigative Study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” the release states. “The local and federal agencies are eager to get to work on a long-term solution, and this funding will help get some of the work started.”

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.